The next morning we were up early as we were contemplating a hike up Mount Scala. The weather, however, had other ideas, and being in a cloud did not set the tone for a fab day's hiking so we quickly changed plans and drove to Loen Active where we hired bikes for four hours.
The bikes were mountain bikes and looked pretty nice (we were feeling smugly as they looked better than the ones the four people before us had gotten). However, the seat posts needed a lot of raising and my handlebars it turned out weren't well attached to the stem. What made it most difficult was that the tyres felt like they were at about 30psi!
We set off towards the Lodalen Valley, having dispensed with an overly chatty man with pink hair from Hastings early on in the ride. The road was very picturesque with a mirror flat lake on one side and some small settlements on the other. It was fairly flat to begin with but both the gradient and wind did pick up, so some definite "ugging" was required!
About 14km in, after a large up hill, a decision had to be made as to whether to carry on to the glacier (6km further and down the other side of said hill) or to turn back. We predictably decided to carry on, the last 4km or so killing our legs and turning to the dreaded gravel road. The glacier was pretty impressive as it turned out, but looked best from 3km from the end, rather than the picnic bench we lunched on which had been handily positioned with a tree blocking the view.
After lunch we assessed the time and realised that we'd been out for 2 hours, and if it took us as long to get back we'd be tight on time for returning the bikes! Cue some power pedalling and the happy realisation that the gravel road had been continuously uphill. Even the climb back to the 14km to go marker wasn't too bad, and freewheeling down the other side gave us an excuse not to chat to chatty Hastings man (who was walking his bike up the hill and still managed to shout "come stay with me in Hastings" after us).
The rest of the cycle really was pleasant, with a building tailwind we beat the tourist boat cruising along the now quite wavy lake, and got back with 45mins to spare. Indeed the bike shop guy looked a bit disbelieving that we'd actually done the whole ride (which I found a bit insulting).
Relieved to be back in time and in the car - especially when it started raining - we pootled along to Hornindal, our stop for the night. Breaking the trend of cabins, we'd booked into the Best Western Plus (I think "Plus" is actually "minus" or "budget") and on arrival our room was ready. It was quite strange having a plus carpet and no kitchen, but a welcome change as unlike the rather dated selection of British Best Westerns I've stayed in, this one was modernly fit out and quite nice.
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